Pragmatics

Presentation by

Sudha Bhingardive(114050002)
Ramkrishna Bairi (114054 001)
Motivation
Watch this video
Where does Pragmatic fit in?
 What is pragmatic?
It is the study of speaker meaning
It is concerned with the study of meaning as communicated by
speaker and interpreted by listener.
It is the study of contexual meaning
It involves interpretation of what people mean in a particular
context and how the context influences what is said.
It is the study of how more gets communicated than is
said
This type of study explores how great deal of what is unsaid is
recognized as part of what is communicated.
It is the study of the expression of relative distance
On the assumption of how close and distant the listener is
speakers determine how much needs to be said.
 Syntax, Semantics and Pragmatics
Syntax:
Study of the relation between linguistic forms, how they are
arranged in sequence, and which sequences are well-formed
Semantics:
Study of the relationship between linguistic forms and entries in
the world
Pragmatic:
Study of relationships between linguistic forms and the users of
those forms
Topics in Pragmatics
Presupposition
Implicature
Reference
Deixis
Speech Acts
 Presupposition
Presupposition is something the speaker assumes to be the case
prior to making an utterance.
Example:
Mary's brother bought three horses
Presuppositions:
1: Mary exists
2: She has a brother
3: She has only one brother
4: He has a lot of money
 Presupposition Cont..
It is the relationship between two proposition
Uses symbol << to mean presupposes
Example :
A: Mary's dog is cute (p)
B: Mary has a dog (q)
C: p >> q

A: Mary's dog is't cute (not p)

B: Mary has a dog (q)
C: not p >> q
 Types of Presupposition
Type Example Presupposition
Existential The dog >> dog exists
Your car >> You have a car
Factive She didnt realize he was ill >> He was ill
I am glad that its over >> Its over
Non-factive I dreamed that I was rich >> I was not rich
He pretended to be happy >> He wasn't happy
Lexical He was smoking >> He used to smoke
He managed to escape >> He tried to escape
Structural When did she leave? >> She left
Where did you buy the bike? >> You bought the bike

Counterfactual If you were my friend you >> You are not my friend
would have help me
If I weren't ill I would have >> I am ill
gone to school
 Conversational Implicature
Implicature: It means more being communicated than is said

Conversational implicature: a meaning or message that is

implicated in a conversation

When people oversay (or say more of ) or undersay (say less of )

something, they produce certain extra meaning or meanings beyond
the literal meanings of words and sentences. This extra meaning is
conversationally dependent, hence conversation implicature.
 Conversational Implicature contd..
- An implicature may also be seen as an indirect way of expressing oneself.
Example 1:
A: Where is the fish?
B: The cat looks very happy.
Example 2:
A: Did you invite John and Mary?
B: I invited John
Example 3:
A: Coming to the wild party tonight?
B: My parents are visiting.
Reference
Reference is thought as an act in which a speaker, or writer, uses linguistic
forms to enable a listener, or reader, to identify something

Can I borrow your Shakespeare?

Yeah, its over there on the table
Context: One student ask another
Intended referent and inferred referent is not a person, probably a book
Wheres the cheese sandwich sitting?
Hes over there by the window.
Context: In a restaurant, one waiter brings the order of food another waiter and
asks him
Referent is person, not the thing
Brazil wins World Cup
Japan wins first round of trade talks
Context: News paper headlines
Referent in first one is soccer team, not government
Referent in second one is government, not the soccer team
Words themselves dont refer to anything, people refer.
Anaphoric reference & Cataphoric reference
Deixis
Pointing via language

Eg: Whats that?

Context: Hearing a loud sound
this is deictic expression
Eg: I will put this here
Not much sense without the context

Types:
Person deictic
me, you, I, he, she, it
Spatial deictic
here, there
I am not here now
Makes sense if the context is telephone recording
Temporal deictic
now, then
Back in an hour
Speech Acts
Performing actions via utterances
The boss utters You are fired
Performs an act of ending the employment
Speech acts can be
Command, apology, complaint, compliment, invitation,
promise, request etc.
The tea is really cold!
Complaint during winter
Compliment during summer
Speech Act
Illocutionary act
(contd)
Basic act of utterance
Illocutionary force
We utter to make statement, request, warning etc
I will see you later
Illocutionary forces
Prediction
Promise
Warning
Perlocutionary effect
Effect on the hearer
Is there a salt bottle there?
During dinner, the hearer will pass on the salt bottle.
Pragmatics in QA/Information
Extraction
More precise answers can be generated
Not much research work done
Question Answering System of Confucian Analects
based on Pragmatics Information and Categories
Paper by Ye Yang, Song Liu, Shingo K, Fuji Ren
Extracting pragmatic info based on paragraph acts
Meaning of paragraph at the level of illocutionary forces
Template based extraction
Machine learning techniques to extract some categories
automatically
Pragmatics in QA/Information
Extraction
Domain : "The Analects of Confucius
dialogue and quotation style
records the statements and actions of Confucius and his
disciples
embodies the political stance, ethics ideas, morale, and
education principle of Confucius

Technique
Classified the documents into categories
12 categories (eg: Humanity, Politics, etc.)
Each category characterized by certain keywords
Extracted Pragmatics
Using annotated documents
Manual; via different views expressed in questionnaire
Pragmatics in QA/Information
Extraction
Chapte Pragmatics Information Confucian Analects
r
numbe
r
1-1 Take the study as a Confucius said,"To learn and practice what
pleasure; make the study is learned time and again is pleasure, is it
and the practice united not? To have friends come from afar is
happiness, is it not? To be unperturbed
when not appreciated by others is
gentlemanly, is it not?
1-2 The respect for elderly and Yu Tzu said, "It is seldom that a man of filial
care for children is the piety and brotherly love would be inclined
basic manner... to offend those above. There has not been a
man inclined to cause disorder without the
inclination to offend those above. The
gentleman nourishes the roots. With roots
established, the way grows. Are filial piety
and brotherly love not the roots of
benevolence?"
Pragmatics in QA/Information
Extraction
Exercise
Morning you hello bring go
Syntax:
Semantic:
Pragmatic:
Go
Syntax:
Semantic:
Pragmatic:
Earth is 8th planet from Sun in our solar system
Syntax:
Semantic:
Pragmatic: /
The tree walked and talked to me
Syntax:
Semantic:
Pragmatic: /
I am vegetarian
Syntax:
Semantic:
Pragmatic: /
Conclusion
Human mind is extremely creative
Languages are very powerful
This can lead to very many contexts, situations and
interpretations
Proper understanding of the context is needed to
appropriately communicate and understand thoughts
Pragmatics play an important role here

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References
PRAGMATICS, George Yule, Oxford University Press, 1996.
The Hand book of Pragmatics, Laurence R Horn, Gregory
Ward, Blackwell publishing, 2007
Ye Yang; Song Liu; Kuroiwa, S.; Ren, F.; , "Question Answering
System of Confucian Analects based on Pragmatics Information
and Categories," Natural Language Processing and Knowledge
Engineering, 2007. NLP-KE 2007. International Conference on ,
vol., no., pp.361-366, Aug. 30 2007-Sept. 1 2007
Song Liu; Ren, F.; , "Paragraph act based pragmatic information
extraction in question answering," Cloud Computing and
Intelligence Systems (CCIS), 2011 IEEE International Conference
on , vol., no., pp.153-157, 15-17 Sept. 2011